Apologizing to Dogs: A Novel

Fictional Worth Row in Fort Worth, Texas is a short cul-de-sac of shops that have traditionally sold antiques and other used goods. But there's hidden goings-on that are about to be exposed as a storm, both metaphoric and literal, is gathering over Fort Worth.

Wacky, outlandish, hilarious, heartwarming and wonderfully human are all adjectives that have been used in reviews of this book. I agree with them all. Definitely a fun summer read with some depth.

Thanks to Lynne at Fictionophile who alerted me to this book.

The first thing I thought when I started to read this book is odd, odd, odd. For one, the first character you meet is a man named "Bone." He's not called Bone because he's super skinny. Nothing obvious like that. He's called Bone because he sucks on a chicken bone all the time. How bizarre.
The whole story just gets weirder and weirder. Elderly Effie sits out on her porch and spies on the neighborhood. She keeps a journal of everything her paranoid self sees. Her neighbors come and go around her, all of them quirky, too. I found the development of each character too shallow to muster up any real feelings for them. In fact, there are so many characters and their development so shallow I had trouble keeping them straight. In all, there are show more over 18 different characters and each get barely a paragraph at one time. If anyone, I liked Carl the best. In an effort to impress a woman he builds a boat...from inside his house - using the insides of his house. And. And, I liked Himself, the dog. Himself is the star of the story, but you wouldn't know right away. show less

A fine novel about a group of eccentric and aging antique store owners in Worth Row, a historic district of Fort Worth. As the story develops, their lives are shown to be increasingly intertwined in many ways. The characters are not all nice folk, but they are all finely drawn, and roughly engaging. The main quibble I have is how thirty years of slowly tangling lives and loves and secrets and passions all come to an improbable boil on one climactic day. But this is an author to watch for.

One of my favorite authors gave this 5 stars and I liked another Coomer book "The Loop", but this one was too twee for me. But it does have some great writing - like this simile on the first page:

"His elbows rested on the bar and his two front teeth sat on his lower lip like a washer and dryer, the washer having wobbled away on spin cycle leaving a gap between his teeth large enough to see a pink wad of lint which was his tongue."

bizarre, funny, somehow memorable though trivial overall. Still makes me smile

this is a bit offtrack for Coomer's books: it's funnier by half, the relationships are more banal, but hey it does contain a ship lol. It's years later and I can still picture and smile about some of the scenes and images.

A feast of characters, quirky, witty and so real. A book to savor.